


Scatter Shot

by flecksofpoppy



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 17:07:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1656005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flecksofpoppy/pseuds/flecksofpoppy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There’s an awkward silence, until, to Nanaki’s surprise, Barret amends apologetically, “Shoulda’ known better than to call you a Shinra name.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scatter Shot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Doink Prompt: _Please use details from any canon in the compilation that most suits your idea. Fic - Nanaki! He is my favourite character, and his opinions on the other characters and events of the canon are very interesting to me. Who he prefers in the group, and why. How he's coping with his past on the inside. Art - Nanaki again. :] This guy is my favourite character and I'd really love any kind of art for him, be it something cute or something dramatic. I like to see him happy and peaceful having finally found his home, or in the middle of a battle looking his awesome self. :]_
> 
> Hope you enjoy! XD

Nanaki has always wondered about what it’s like to be human. He’s been _de_ -humanized, ironically, but never fully recognized as a sentient being outside of Cosmo Canyon. And he found that outside the Canyon, there were more beasts than he’d ever thought possible. 

It seems at times as if the travelers he’s encountered are trying to figure it out, too. Even the first one he met—Aeris—had been presented as something else, some _thing_ in a test tube. She, apparently, is not human either. The others have their individual stories, too, and even some of them don’t have human parts.

Nanaki is feeling characteristically philosophical, but after the evening he’s had at Cosmo Canyon, he feels like talking, rather than living in his head. This is especially due to the fact that he’s gone from traveling with a band of wayward misfits to being one himself; and, perhaps, it was foolish of him to ever think that he was anything but just that.

He wanders in through where they’re camping for the night, and the first person he sees is Barret Wallace.

For some reason, Barret suddenly seems like the perfect person to talk to. Out of the group, as far as Nanaki knows, he’s the only parent. And after an evening of seeing his own father frozen in stone, realizing that his grandfather is closer to death than Nanaki’s willing to admit, there’s something almost strangely comforting about the thought of talking to a living, breathing father.

Barret is sitting on a large rock, cleaning his Gatling gun arm, polishing the metal slowly under the moonlight of the Canyon. The stars look like a burst of white in the dark sky, and the metal is glinting with the sheen of oil.

“What’s up?” Barret asks as Nanaki comes to sit next to him. He’s not usually a calm person, but tonight, he’s quiet; content to polish his gun-arm and simply be.

“My grandfather suggested I go with you,” Nanaki replies after a moment, moving to sit down on his haunches. “I’m in agreement that it’s a wise idea.”

Barret makes a contemplative noise, and shifts his eyes over to Nanaki. “What for?”

“I’d like to help the Planet, as is my duty.”

That gets a curt nod of approval, and Barret sets down his polishing cloth to examine the gun-arm where the metal meets flesh.

“I gotta ask...” Barret says after a moment, seemingly satisfied with his inspection. He coughs a little, as if embarrassed, but then he gruffly asks, “What it’s like not to have hands?”

If Nanaki could laugh, he would; instead, it comes out as a bit of a feral growl. As expected, though, Barret makes no move to shy back, waiting expectantly for the answer.

“I suppose much like your arm does,” he replies logically, studying the Gatling gun, “but I can retract mine.”

That gets a hearty laugh out of Barret. “I like you, Red.”

He hasn’t heard the name in a while, and it suddenly stings; if he could burn that tattoo off his shoulder, he would.

“My name’s Nanaki.” He tries to make his voice sound calm, but it still comes out gritted.

Barret grunts and goes back to polishing the metal.

There’s an awkward silence, until, to Nanaki’s surprise, Barret amends apologetically, “Shoulda’ known better than to call you a Shinra name.”

“No harm done,” Nanaki replies. The atmosphere settles back into a tenuously comfortable one, and he flexes his claws on the earth, feeling the way they curl so naturally, and then looks back at Barret’s arm. 

“Why a gun?”

“Liked the sound it made,” Barret replies immediately.

“What?” Nanaki asks, looking up in curiosity to meet Barret’s eyes.

“I had to pick a replacement for a hand,” Barret says, putting down his polishing rag to make the gun spin slowly without firing. “Figured I might as well get one that made a shit ton of noise.”

“Where’re those scars and tattoos from?” Barret asks in kind as he lowers his arm, surprising Nanaki. 

Nanaki turns his head to look at the tattoos on his shoulder. There’s the hastily scrawled “XIII” that will forever give him nightmares and remind him of how mako burns the nose—particularly to creatures with a sensitive sense of smell—and then one below that from his tribe. 

“They’re decorative, except for the scar over my eye and the thirteen, obviously,” he replies, blinking his one remaining eye at Barret. “The same as tattoos are for humans, only they do hold meaning for my tribe.”

Barret laughs low in his throat. “I got one on my shoulder you can’t see,” he says, “of my old best friend’s name. And then this one,” he says, holding up his arm to show off the skull tattoo. He shakes his head and raises an eyebrow, grunting, “Wall Market.”

Nanaki hums thoughtfully, and lies down on the ground. The cool, sandy dirt is a welcome reminder of where they are; he’d truly believed at one point that he’d never return home, that he’d die at the hands of humankind.

“Gonna get one that says ‘Marlene’ after all this is over,” Barret adds after a moment.

Nanaki feels a pang; but then he decides that maybe he’ll add one, too, for Seto. 

They sit there companionably for a few minutes; Nanaki watches the sky, and he’s soothed since he associates this view of it with his grandfather’s observatory. The distant fire is pleasant, and for once, all calamity has ceased for an evening.

“Hard to touch people,” Barret says suddenly. He looks over at Nanaki with a raised eyebrow, but no other part of his hardened face moves. “You ever feel that way, with your claws?”

“Well,” Nanaki says softly, “that’s not really something my kind does. We mostly ‘touch’ with our faces, I suppose.”

“Hm,” Barret hums contemplatively. “Don’t got much use for touch nowadays anyway, unless it’s to fight.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Nanaki agrees. “I’m the last of my kind, so...”

Barret shoots him an unexpectedly wry smile that resembles more of a pained smirk than an actual expression of joy. “Yup... kinda the same.”

Nanaki lets out his own version of a snort, but Barret seems to be able to understand nevertheless. 

Barret’s outright rage had initially made Nanaki uncertain about whether he could be trusted; but just like the stars, nothing can be judged accurately without looking at them from various angles.

Barret picks up that same, unexpectedly confessional tone again, though, as he turns to really look Nanaki in the eye.

“I got this,” he says, holding up his gun-arm, “before Marlene. Nothin’ good about hugging a kid with a gun.”

Nanaki holds up his own paw and flexes his claws. “There’s use for claws, and guns, but rarely for anything else.”

“Gotta say,” Barret grins, crossing his arms over his broad chest, “there ain’t no better way to fight than giving up your fingers and hands for claws.”

Nanaki laughs a little in his throat, and slashes at the dirt. “They’re not what they used to be,” he remarks, retracting them, “after spending so much time in a specimen tube.”

“Shinra...” Barret growls, his voice immediately dark and angry. He stops suddenly to stare at Nanaki. “Real sorry I called you that name before.”

“That’s all right,” Nanaki says with a little sigh. “That’s what you met me as, and first impressions hold strong.”

“Yeah,” Barret agrees. “So what kinda stuff can you do with those?”

“Well,” Nanaki starts, “maul.”

“Just... maul?”

“You’ve seen beasts attack before, right?”

“Sure,” Barret replies, frowning. “You ain’t a... beast.”

“Strange word,” Nanaki replies, looking up into the sky. “Beast. What does it mean?”

“Evil,” Barret immediately supplies.

“Well,” Nanaki corrects, “or does it mean wild?”

Barret makes a thoughtful noise at that, and picks up his polishing rag again to idly slide it along the metal. The pale light of the open sky makes it shine like a sliver of moon, and he points it at the sky.

“I used to shoot bullets up into the air,” he remarks suddenly, “to try and hit the upper plate. Just to see.”

“Did it ever work?” Nanaki asks, looking up at the sky. 

“Damn waste of bullets,” Barret laughs wryly.

“In a way,” Nanaki continues, staring into the splash of distant stars, “they look like bullet holes. Just a bunch of holes in the sky.”

“Look like diamonds to me,” Barret replies, and raises his arm up in the air. “Wonder if I could shoot ‘em outta the sky.”

Nanaki growls out an amused sound, and looks up, too.

“ _Mauling_ the stars won’t do any good, so try it.”

“Don’t want to hurt anyone,” Barret says quickly, lowering the gun. “Besides, you wake up Tifa when she’s already asleep, and no claws, no gun, no bullet will save you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Nanaki says almost warily. Tifa is no one to be trifled with, after all.

“She’s got gloves,” Barret remarks suddenly, looking at Nanaki as he rests his gun arm in his lap. “Bad ass gloves. Beatin’ gloves. She didn’t get ‘em until she got to Midgar, even though she’d been using hands her whole life to beat away people that held her down.”

“I can understand that,” Nanaki replies softly, looking up at the sky one more time.

Barret joins him, and says softly, “Scatter shot across the sky. Kinda pretty, in a way.”

“Yeah,” Nanaki agrees, “just little parts, moving along through space.”

They sit in silence after that, listening to the fire crackle, and Nanaki watches the sparks rise into the dark sky. They fly off into the night, and Nanaki buries his paws into the earth, listening to the soft _click click click_ of Barret’s gun-arm as he starts to polish the metal again.

Somewhere, Marlene is looking up at the same stars as Seto, and Nanaki shuts his eye.


End file.
